Young Lives eBook

So Henry had to finish the fair copy of his poems
at home in his lodgings of an evening, for so ambitious
a private enterprise could not be carried on in his
own office without perilous interruptions. He
was making the copy with especial care, in the form
of a real book; and when it was made, he daintily
bound it in vellum with his own hands. Then he
wrapped it lovingly in tissue paper, and kept it by
him two or three days, in readiness for Angel’s
birthday, on the morning of which day he hid it in
a box of flowers and sent it to Angel. The sympathetic
reader can imagine her delight, as she discovered
among the flowers a dainty little white volume, bearing
the title-page, “The Book of Angelica, by Henry
Mesurier. Tyre, 1886. Edition limited to
one copy.”

Now this little book presently began to enjoy a certain
very carefully limited circulation among Angel’s
friends. Of course they were not allowed to take
it away. They were only allowed to look at it
now and again for a few minutes, Angel anxiously standing
by to see that they did not soil her treasure.
Sometimes Mr. Flower would ask Angel to show it to
one of the family friends; and thus one evening it
came beneath the eyes of a little Scotch printer who
had a great love for poetry and some taste in it.

“The man’s a genius,” he said, with
all that authority with which a strong Scotch accent
mysteriously endows the humblest Scot.

“The man’s a genius,” he repeated;
“his poems must be printed.”

Henry had already found that this was easier said
than done, for he had already tried several London
publishers who professed their willingness to publish—­at
his expense. This little Scotch printer, however,
was to prove more venturesome. He forthwith communicated
a proposal to Henry through the Flowers. If Henry
would provide him with a list of a certain number
of friends he could rely on for subscriptions, he would
take the risk of printing an edition, and give Henry
half the profits,—­a proposal as generous
as it was rash. Angel communicated the offer in
an excited little letter, with the result that Mr.
Leith and Henry met one morning in the bar-parlour
of “The Green Man Still,” and parted an
hour or so after in a high state of friendship, and
deeply pledged together to a mutual adventure of three
hundred copies of a book to be called “The Book
of Angelica,” and to be printed in so dainty
a fashion that the mere outside should attract buyers.

Mr. Leith worked under difficulties, for his business,
small as it was, was much saddled with pecuniary obligations
which it but inadequately supported. His printing
of Henry’s poems was really a work of sheer
idealism which none but a Scotsman, or perhaps an Irishman,
would have undertaken; and it was a work that might
at any moment be interrupted by bailiffs, empowered
to carry away the presses and the very types over
which Henry loved to hang in his spare hours, trying
to read in the lines of mysteriously carved metal,
his “Madrigal to Angelica singing,” or
his “Sonnet on first beholding Angelica.”